


and all we wanna do is keep on keeping true

by mysilenceknot



Category: Hawkeye (Comics), Young Avengers
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, Recovery, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-10
Updated: 2015-08-10
Packaged: 2018-04-13 23:24:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4541421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mysilenceknot/pseuds/mysilenceknot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>When Kate hits her one year traumaversary, the first thing she does after waking up is have a full-fledged panic attack.<i></i></i>
</p>
<p>Kate Bishop gets through anniversaries of her assault differently each year.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and all we wanna do is keep on keeping true

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this to deal with my own anniversary. *confetti*  
> Warnings for anxiety and non-descriptive references to rape.  
> Title comes from [Never Fading Out](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRWWEs5s4DE) by Someone's Little Sister.

When Kate hits her one year traumaversary, the first thing she does after waking up is have a full-fledged panic attack.

Panic attacks are super rare for her. Or, at least, they’d  _become_  super rare. With her therapist’s help she’d managed to work to a point where she could walk in the park without feeling the urge to sprint in the opposite direction and it’d been months with no signs of the overwhelming anxiety.

Yet here she was, in bed, a year after the day she was raped, having a panic attack instead of getting ready for school. Instead of living a normal life.

Once she’s aware enough to work on not hyperventilating it still takes about half an hour for her to stop crying and shaking.

Fuck going to school.

Kate rides her bike to a diner, then to a museum, then to an outdoor market. She stays in spaces full of people and light, spaces that keep her mentally as far away from that section of the park as possible. 

And it’s okay. She’s okay. She buys a new Mandala coloring book and markers to celebrate her survival, using them for the first time while sitting at a cafe in front of a traffic packed road. 

It’s sunny outside and Kate Bishop is alive.

\--

When Kate hits her three year traumaversary, she’s way too busy to think about anything but the war she’s in. It’s just a day, another day of kicking ass and trying to save the entire planet without getting killed in the process.

It’s not after the Skrulls have been defeated that it hits her. She’s made it through an alien invasion. She’s also made it through three years without feeling completely safe in her own body.

But she’s making a difference. She’s making the world safer for other girls in the hopes that maybe she can be the hero she’d wished she had. And even though Kate isn’t safe, she has safe spaces. She has a new, incredible family that loves her in a way she hadn’t felt since her mom died. Her life is unbelievable and exhausting, but it’s still so much better than she’d thought it could become.

\--

When Kate hits her five year traumaversary, she seriously considers getting wasted.

Like, absolutely shitfaced wasted.

There’s no one physically there to stop her from walking into the grocery store, buying a cheap bottle of red wine, and drinking it straight from the bottle to try to forget how her life’s absolute trash. However, money. And Lucky. And the damn cat.

It’s not even really about the rape today. That’s part of it, that’s a fairly large part of it if she has to admit it, but it’s been just weeks of trying to get to the core of whatever the fuck’s going on in L.A. and trying not to die and Kate wants to forget about all of it. Forget that she’s far away from everyone, forget her argument with Clint, forget how badly her body hurts after every fight, forget _why_ she knows how to fight. 

Forget forget forget.

Instead she’s a responsible adult who deals with her emotions by ignoring them. She interviews a new round of potential clients. She goes grocery shopping and buys ice cream instead of alcohol. She does her laundry. She plays with Lucky on the beach. She has dinner with Marcus and Finch.

Kate doesn’t give herself room to feel bad until it’s late at night, when the animals are sleep and she’s eating from the tub of ice cream.

The therapist she’d gotten secretly back when she was a scared sixteen year old girl had once told her that trauma would get easier as she got further away from it. It was a part of her now but like any wound, if treated properly it would hurt less and less as it healed. Which was true.

Her therapist had also told her that some days would ache.

She cries silently but steadily as she eats the ice cream in the dark because it hurts. Her thoughts this year don’t focus on the actual event, but they’re still not in good places. Sometimes she still feels like that terrified teenager who’s screaming for help. Not so much today, but those days still come. She wonders if the echos of that fear will ever fade.

Maybe one day the circle of people who knew can expand past her therapist and Jessica Jones. For now, she has chocolate ice cream with too much chocolate to keep her company. It's a little lonely, sure, but it's how she's survived to this point.

Tomorrow will be another day with a different set of challenges.  
Kate can worry about facing them when the day comes.


End file.
